


Hibiki Heero

by Omnicat



Category: Gundam Wing, Ranma 1/2
Genre: Gen, old fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-25
Updated: 2015-09-25
Packaged: 2018-04-23 08:44:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4870558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omnicat/pseuds/Omnicat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’ve been lost since the day I was born.” Aw, poor <i>emotionally</i> confused little Heero. Right? Well, maybe not...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hibiki Heero

**Author's Note:**

> Don't think too hard about the whole secret identities thing. In this fic, Ranma-logic applies.

_On Heero Yuy and Gundam Wing’s Comedy Levels_

Fans, casual viewers and hearsay-goers of Gundam Wing alike are likely to be familiar with the phrase "I’ve been lost since the day I was born.". It was uttered in the Endless Waltz movie/OVA by Heero Yuy, upon encountering an innocent young girl who was walking her dog.

Scholars have written at length about various different interpretations of this phrase. Is Heero thinking of the family and home allegedly lost to him at an early age, as hinted at by Odin Lowe in a different chapter of the Gundam Wing story? Is he referring back to the bombs he installed only moments before the girl’s arrival, thereby giving the citation a moral and ethical charge? Is it supposed to be taken as a clue to this war child’s confusion about what his stunted emotions are telling him to do or not do?

Whatever the angle, those who study the events of the hit anime docu-drama Gundam Wing all agree on one thing: ‘lost’ is to be interpreted in a psychological sense. In this document, however, you will find out that this is _wrong_.

‘Lost’ was never meant to be a metaphor: he had _literally_ been constantly losing his way ever since he was born. How is that possible, you ask? Unless he never visited a single spot twice this is impossible, you say? In normal human beings, this is indeed true. But not for the man known in the history books as ‘Heero Yuy’, because he, unlike the vast majority of mankind, was born without a sense of direction.

Yes. Really.

It is a rare genetic condition that impedes certain types of brain functions and logical thinking, causing the sufferer to lose his or her way every time they try to go somewhere. _Every single time._ This impairment is hereditary and incurable; the only thing that has been shown to relieve the symptoms somewhat (and even then only temporarily), is a cause inspired by true love, such as the wish to save a loved one’s life or virtue.

The man who would be director of Gundam Wing was inspired by other autobiographical accounts of people with strange afflictions - such as Dorian Gray and his infamous picture, Hairy Snout, Human Heart and its anonymous lycantropic author, the many strains of vampirism covered in the life stories of people like Count Dracula, ‘Angel’, Alucard, Lestat de Lioncourt and many others, and various victims of the Cursed Jusenkyo Springs in China, the most famous of whom being Ranma Saotome, who turned from male to female whenever doused with cold water. Then a successful journalist, this man saw in Heero Yuy’s handicap an opportunity to make a part of epic world history into a marketable media franchise. No doubt his intentions were noble; the exploits of Heero Yuy, Relena Darlian and their associates have shaped the history of the Earth and colonies irrevocably, and what better way to teach snot-nosed little brats important history lessons than wrapping it in a cool story about a reluctant hero, brave heroine and their motley band of allies?

Historians and media critics have long disagreed on whether the voice actors in the series played the roles they had had in the real life events. As someone with inside knowledge, I can inform you that this is indeed the case, though of course the names and character designs were altered so as to allow these people to remain anonymous.

Thus, the real people involved in the events Gundam Wing is based on, agreed to tell their stories and help shape their stage characters and reconstruct their story in a way suitable for prime-time entertainment. However, at some point late in the planning stage, someone chickened out. You see, the real Heero Yuy is not at all the brooding, violently antisocial person Gundam Wing portrays him as. It is true that his troublesome condition has made him prone to hissy fits, recklessness and bone-deep stubbornness, as well as giving him endless amounts of time to convince himself that displaying these traits is a mark of badassery no matter what the context (attitude really does make the man). He is, however, empathically _not_ suicidal or homicidal. Aside from the occasional hissy fit, he takes his lot quite well, and bulldozers over any obstacle he encounters in a way that is rather humorous to behold.

Long story short, Heero Yuy’s natural potential for comedy did not sit entirely right with the Big Bosses of the Gundam Wing project. Such a turbulent and traumatic era should not be treated as a source of amusement so obviously, was the verdict. So a drastic redirection of the mood of the show was deemed in order. To do this, Heero’s directional dysfunction was scrapped from the scripts.

In the spirit of ‘nobody can refute our inside knowledge without asking the people involved, so as long as we keep the outcome the same and make the contributors’ contracts strict enough, we can do whatever we want’, an avalanch of changes was made. The character Zechs Merquise was robbed of a hilariously tragic back-story concerning his inability to make a career in the hotel, restaurant and catering industry after having fled the destroyed Sank Kingdom, leading to his lines about take-out delivery - from salami pizza’s to large ham sandwiches - to be replaced with the moral and philosophical musings about soldiers he is so well known for today. The only thing that stayed intact of his dialogue is the volume and tone with which he brought his lines; that of a delivery boy in heart, soul, and poetry.

Likewise, the only remnant of Quatre Raberba Winner’s humoristic, over-the-top moments of gay romance is a heavily edited music scene with Trowa Barton. Trowa himself was unable to contain his bitterness at his loss of hot male-on-male action, so he was given the most gritty background of all to explain away his grouchy voice acting.

In a case somewhat similar to the above, Chang Wufei and Long Meilan’s roles were switched and their back-story changed to remove any reference to ancient Chinese amazon tribes and their customs. Unable to hide his frustration with being unable to bring a positive message about modern stay-at-home husbands to the story, and woefully bad at conveying sarcasm, Wufei gained an unfortunate and, you will now hopefully understand, undeserved reputation as a hot-tempered misogynist.

Heero’s own storyline was initially built entirely around his non-existent sense of direction and the effect it had on his job as a rebel fighter. Him being the sole protagonist before the rearrangement of the show, this caused changes even in storylines which would otherwise have stayed the same.

His meeting with Relena Darlian before his enrollment in her school, for instance, was initially meant to be many coincidental meetings. They would run into each other while she was on her way to and from school, in parks, pools, sports centers and shopping malls, while he tried to find his way from the crash site of Wing Gundam to his first target. Their reunion at the St Gabriel Academy became much more tense without the familiarity they were first meant to have already built, and since her motivation for following him to the marina thus changed from concern about his handicap to distrust of his motives, Heero’s Liquid EyesTM gained Mary Sueish, almost supernatural powers of persuasion.

The haphazard trek through Europe was too important to the time-line to scrap, so a new reason for Heero to go on it was introduced in the form of the New Edwards and Siberia incidents and a convoluted repentance plot. To this day, the story writers consider themselves lucky that they were able to link the new version of Endless Waltz to the unexplained disaster at New Edwards. It was the birth of Gundam Wing as we know it, and the death of a chance at first-rate comedy.

As proof of this no doubt shocking and controversial revelation about one of our world’s most cherished pieces of imagined history, I will conclude this document by including the original script of Heero’s encounter with the little girl in Endless Waltz. I hope you will understand, now that you have read this, that though undoubtedly significant on some historical scale or other, the true tragedy of Gundam Wing was not meant to be the Eve Wars, but Heero Yuy’s fateful affliction.

_Scene: HY enters by leaping over a fence, camera from below to catch his silhouette against the overhead glare of the colony ‘sun’. Switch to view of legs and torso, moving upwards from the ankles to the shoulders slowly as he runs across the lawn until suddenly - he stumbles to a halt._  
_HY: “Oh. Right.” Plonks down in the grass and takes out a remote detonator. “Better wait here until J comes to pick me up. Then I’ll literally and figuratively blow this joint. Haha.” Panting laughter._  
_Shot from above of HY stretched out in grass, relaxed, until a shadow falls over him. Change to Regular View of HY and Girl._  
_Girl: “Hi. What are you doing here? I’ve never seen you before. Are you lost?”_  
_HY: blinks and sits up. “Huh, yeah.”_  
_Girl: “Oh. That’s sad.”_  
_HY: sourly. “It’s not sad, it’s - er, something I probably shouldn’t say in front of someone your age.”_  
_Girl: looks surprised, then smiles and pets the puppy’s head. “I’m not lost, I’m walking Mary. Would you like to come walk her with me?”_  
_HY: “I can’t. I’m waiting for someone to come pick me up.”_  
_Girl: “Oh. Why are you waiting? It’s a nice day. You should take a walk.”_  
_HY: “If I started walking now I’d never find my way back home. I’ve been lost since the day I was born, you know.”_  
_Girl: gasps. “Really? That long?”_  
_HY: nods. “My parents got lost inside the hospital when they wanted to pick me up from the maternity ward to take me home for the first time. And when the doctors gave me to them they got lost on the way to their house. My Mom and I got lost on the way to my first day of school, so I was three days late. One day I went to play outside and just couldn’t find my way back home at all. That’s how I ended up here. I haven’t seen my parents in ages.”_  
_Girl: “Oh that’s so sad!” The puppy starts pulling at its leash. “Oh. I gotta go, Mary needs to go pee-pee. I hope you’ll find your mom and dad soon!” Waves and runs off._  
_HY: sighs and flops back down, hands behind his head and a melancholy look on his face. “I hope so too.”_

 

With a final keystroke, the writer leaned back and rested his hands in his lap.

A sense of satisfaction beyond compare warmed his old bones as he watched the words ‘SENDING... PLEASE WAIT’ disappear and be replaced by ‘YOUR MESSAGE WAS SENT’, and he thought of all the places his manifesto would reach, all the eyes that would read it, all the media it would be passed on to. This would show them. The idiots who made fun of his family for their affliction would think twice now that they knew Heero ‘Yuy’, their idol, suffered from the same thing. They’d be sorry. They would finally respect him, respect his son, respect his -

“Grampa! Grampa Ryoga!”

Small hands banging enthusiastically on the door to his study startled the writer from his referee.

Standing up and opening the door, he found his youngest grandchild, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Yes, Akane? What is it?”

“Mommy told me to get you and Daddy and Odin downstairs for dinner.” the girl said brightly.

Ryoga’s satisfaction with his work was the only thing keeping him from groaning, grimacing or scowling. He was _never_ going to get used to being led around his daughter-in-law’s house (which was also his own nowadays, if only for lack of ability to find his old one back) by the hand of a five-year-old. The mansion was the biggest drawback of Heero marrying a woman as wealthy as Relena.

But luckily also practically the only one.

“Thank you, sweetie.”

Ryoga shut down his computer and followed after little Akane as she picked up her father and older brother as well before leading them all downstairs and to the dining room. Seeing Heero and young Odin’s downcast faces, he clapped his unfortunate offspring on their shoulders.

“Cheer up, boys. It could have been worse.” he said. They looked at him as if he’d grown a second head, and to conceal the real reason for his uncharacteristic glee, he added: “At least your Uncle Ranma doesn’t know I’ve settled down here. You’d never hear the end of it!”

“Not funny, Gramps.”

“How is that a good thing? If he ever finds out it’s _your_ fault.”

Ryoga only smirked. _You’ll see, boys. Just wait. Your old man has caught up on his share of the rebellion. You’ll see._  

**Author's Note:**

> Comments on older fics will ALWAYS remain welcome.


End file.
